Pre-Sandy schedule on way

Thursday

Mar 21, 2013 at 2:00 AM

PORT JERVIS - Robb Tipton gets it. he Tuxedo man works in Lower Manhattan and knows how devastating Hurricane Sandy was — and how the recovery, five months later, is anything but complete. Tipton, however, just saw Metro-North raise the cost of his monthly ticket to $283 from $260 on March 1 and now feels emboldened to ask when, oh, when, will the extra stops in New Jersey that commuters have endured since Sandy end. "These extra stops for the 5:46 a.m. from Tuxedo — Ridgewood, Radburn, Glen Rock, Rutherford — have resulted in more crowded and louder trains," said Tipton. The answer is Sunday. True to their word, Metro-North and NJ Transit will return Port Jervis line trains to their pre-Sandy times with this next schedule change.

Judy Rife

PORT JERVIS — Robb Tipton gets it.

The Tuxedo man works in Lower Manhattan and knows how devastating Hurricane Sandy was — and how the recovery, five months later, is anything but complete.

Tipton, however, just saw Metro-North raise the cost of his monthly ticket to $283 from $260 on March 1 and now feels emboldened to ask when, oh, when, will the extra stops in New Jersey that commuters have endured since Sandy end.

"These extra stops for the 5:46 a.m. from Tuxedo — Ridgewood, Radburn, Glen Rock, Rutherford — have resulted in more crowded and louder trains," said Tipton.

The answer is Sunday.

True to their word, Metro-North and NJ Transit will return Port Jervis line trains to their pre-Sandy times with this next schedule change.

The additional stops have added upwards of 10, 15 or more minutes to the trek to Hoboken, N.J., from Orange County, making some of the longest commutes in the metropolitan region even longer. And the stops have remained well after Sandy damage to connecting services to Manhattan was repaired.

What has stood in the way of this return to normalcy was the destruction, in an eight-foot storm surge, of NJ Transit's electrical substation that controlled all train movements in Hoboken.

Until last week, when the substation was weaned from generators, NJ Transit simply didn't have enough juice to operate a full complement of trains to Hoboken on its Main/Bergen lines. As a result, Metro-North, reasoning NJ Transit was there for them after Hurricane Irene, agreed to the extra stops. The deal gave NJ Transit enough extra capacity to squeak by until the substation was repaired.

James Weinstein, NJ Transit's executive director, said the new schedules for the Main/Bergen, Morris & Essex and Montclair-Boonton lines restore virtually all service to Hoboken and represent "tremendous progress" in recovering from the state's worst natural disaster.